Ruben had been minding his own business, almost cheerfully, when he was interrupted. By the caretaker, no less. He'd just finished beating his personal record for laps swum around the indoor pool and was gearing up to add at least five more onto his count when the Asian woman's amplified voice had echoed through the air. He had then fully submerged, optimistic that he could get out of whatever lame-ass intrusion on his free time had been announced. But to his great annoyance, his distorted view of deep blue ripples and the end of his blonde plait drifting over his head was still pierced through by her voice underwater. Ugh.

Of all the students present in the Rec Centre at the time, Ruben was one of few who did not complete changing in the ridiculously small amount of minutes that the caretaker gave them. Because he was totally considerate in giving the ickle fourth- and fifth-years priority to monopolize the locker area, which benefitted him too as it let him avoid the somewhat chaotic horde. Also because eff the system. His free time was supposed to be his free time, you know, to do things he actually wanted to do.

And so it came to be that Ruben, beads of water still dripping from plaited hair down his chest, bare except for his usual Mjölnir pendant and the towel bunched up around his shoulders, joined the rest of the older students in the greenhouses. And became promptly more irritated with the disruption to his workout. So now this wasn't just a spontaneous summons to a class he didn't take and had next to no interest in anyways, but he was being forced to help resolve somebody else's problem? What a waste of time.

Muttering a broad selection of words in mixed languages under his breath, Ruben grumpily folded his hands into denim pockets and waited for the 'professor' (ironic quotes were necessary, since he strongly doubted the man had the intelligence to be an actual professor) to finish talking. The whole angle of trying to catch billywigs without hurting them was stupid, but it might wind up being a decent substitute for his usual agility drills... Å, he'd just have to see how it went. It might, after all, wind up being a good reason to cut class later today instead.

While there were obvious downsides to being only half clothed in a scenario where he was aiming not to get stung by demonic big-blue wasps, one upside of not even having his wand on him was that he was already thinking to whip out his wandless magic and rely on that. Ruben felt no need or desire to clump up with the rest in fetching safety gear or any other type of equipment. As soon as he spotted a billywig near, the Swede fired off a wandless icing hex. The newly ice-cubed bug had barely rattled to the ground before he was off again, winding deeper into the greenhouse.

...only not too deep. After a few minutes, he came across the new transfer student, who was helpfully floating in such a way that Ruben's arm knocked into the younger boy before realizing he was there. "Ojdå," he sighed unapologetically, blue eyes rolling at Nolan. "You are being very inconvenient. Could you try failing a little harder over there? Maybe even inside of it?" He pointed directly at a stout hedge whose leaves were hiccoughing loudly. Ruben then spotted a pair of billywigs and flicked his wrist the other way, his whispered incantatum resulting in one more buggy ice-cube and the other zipping away to pester someone else. His final move was to wring out the end of his plait again and raise an expectant eyebrow at the legless boy. He had no interest in being here to help, but he was here and helping now whereas Nolan was being actively useless, and might as well go be useless somewhere else.

While Nolan was en route to the Finer Diner, a man wearing a bright red Muggle suit who Nolan had literally never seen before in his whole life appeared out of nowhere and proclaimed that everyone... more